Lee, Sueyeun Juliette: No Comet, that Serpent in the Sky Means Noise

No Comet, That Serpent in the Sky Means Noise by Sueyeun Juliette Lee (Kore Press, paperback)

Publication Date: May 5, 2017

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. A meditation on light, human displacement, and longing, NO COMET, THAT SERPENT IN THE SKY MEANS NOISE centers on a single conjecture: If light is a language sent forth from distant bodies and stars, what are we likewise saying into those black distances? Through hardship and loss, these poems invoke a hopeful solace in the subtle light that races onwards from all beings with its enduring message. Lee invites us to admit the soft stellar calling of life, to listen to its missive of peace.

"Sueyeun Juliette Lee's poetry sets out to make the interplay between page and reader one of convergence, a meeting of mind and matter that teaches us 'how to speak after a different daylight emerges.' Her work deciphers the unseen—not simply our secret selves, but the inner departure from the mundane ordinariness of an existence left un-interrogated. She sets out to challenge centeredness, to reveal our hidden organs, and so grounds the collection in the essential, winnowing the world to shadow before casting light on every corner. Smart poetry does great work in that it values the work the reader brings with her. This collection leaves us catechizing the account we make of our senses and counts individuated breath in a perpetual inventory of language and being." —Ruth Ellen Kocher